#5 Thoughts on Greenness

Although the speaker was highly respected in the world and a very honorable guest, I felt as if her speech was like any other "green" speech. She pointed out many problems, and even new ones that I have never really thought of, but didn't really give many examples to solve these problems. Sure, she talked about conserving energy, changing to energy-efficient light bulbs, walking, and biking, but haven't we all heard these before? She pointed out problems I didnt really think about such as the Los Angeles pollution and the concentration of toxic power plants around low-income and colored neighborhoods. Just because these low-income families are not politically active or politically influential does not mean they can be bombarded with factories that produce pollution, endangering their lives. I thought she did make one good point in a way of solving these problems. She answered a student, when asked what we should do to really try and help, that we should try to write to our congressmen to really get our opinions voiced and really get the congressmen aware of what is going on in communities across our cities. But overall, if I had to tell her where to really work on her speech would be to provide more solutions, because she is such a professoinal in this topic and also to cut down on talking about herself so much.

#3 To save or not to save?

There are over 6,000 languages in the world, yet 96% of the world’s population speak only 4% of these languages. What about the rest of the 96% of the 6,000 languages found in the world? Why are so little people speaking these languages? The truth is that every two weeks, one language completely dies out. That means a language, along with its culture, can never be heard or seen again in this earth’s history. But should all languages be saved, or only ones that meet or have certain qualities or traits? This topic of saving languages brings many controversies. Although every culture, with its language, is considered valuable in this world, there must be a distinct line as to where which languages are worth saving. If the world tried to save every language humanly possible, invaluable amount of resources and time would be thrown away when they could be used in more important matters. If a language with only 17 speakers and no distinct culture worth countless years and millions of dollars? Although a harsh statement, all languages are not worth saving. The languages worth saving should have a considerable amount of speakers, a knowledge, literature, or culture that is unique and important, and a generally positive and receptive attitude from non-speakers in the world.